A SIDE OF ME THAT MIGHT SURPRISE YOU.

did you know that I've composed and recorded fifteen albums of electronic music? I haven't released any of late due to being occupied with my freelance writing work, editing my How I Was Razed memoir, and searching for new customers for my two previous books. many of my pieces were played on radio stations in Moscow, Warsaw, Paris, Montreal, and on more than a dozen college stations in America. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation even aired my "Contacting U2MIR" piece across the nation. I also made a few black-and-white music videos for my tunes. Please click here to watch one of them.

From my When a Man Loves a Rabbit (Learning and Living With Bunnies) memoir, here's an excerpt about how I merged my love for rabbits with my passion for electronic music.

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My passion for that genre began in 1975 when I became an instant fan of Kraftwerk, a German electronic music group. I heard their hit, Autobahn, played on 630 CHED, Edmonton's rock music radio station, and I bought their first three albums.

Listening to them, I felt inspired to create my own sonic textures. Other electronic artists intimidated me with their racks of expensive synthesizers, but Kraftwerk's earlier music could be produced even by poor musicians.

During the late seventies, I had tinkered with various circuits and acoustic sound-making devices in my home. It was for my own amusement and I never mentioned it to my friends because I never dreamed that anybody would be interested in my sort of compositions.

In December 1984, I discovered a program on CJSR radio called Departures. The host Marcel Dion played all sorts of fascinating compositions and he invited "home tapers" to submit their music for broadcast. In March, of 1985, believing that my work might have a chance of being played, I copied all of my experiments onto a cassette and hand-delivered it to Marcel while he was doing his program.

Those early recordings were very primitive, but as time passed, I bought better gear and improved my technique. During the summer of 1998, and in honour of my beloved Gideon, I recorded an album called Lagomorph.

The title refers to the family of animals comprising rabbits, hares and pikas. When I visited a web page containing the word rabbit in different languages, I decided to title each of my new tunes with those names. It took me a few months to record and manufacture the album at home, partly due to my freelance writing work and also because of other interruptions.


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When a Man Loves a Rabbit contains many more fascinating stories of life with house bunnies. These range from the tragic to the hilarious. Click here to read more about this book and to order it. You may also e-mail me directly if the comment form doesn't work.